In this episode, we have the privilege of speaking to the very brilliant Bhanu Kapil about the UK publication of her collection Incubation: a space for monsters. We discuss what it means to return to earlier work in new contexts, and why the figure of the monster or cyborg is so crucial to her work, in relation to migration and border politics. We chat about the role of the body within her work, and the language of flesh and bones. We discuss the relationship between performance, writing and memory and what it means to make work which refuses categorisation.

Bhanu Kapil is the author of six full-length poetry collections and a recipient of a Windham- Campbell Prize and a Cholmondeley Award. Her most recent book, How To Wash A Heart, won the T.S. Eliot Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. For twenty years, she taught creative writing, performance art and contemplative practice at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She is currently based in Cambridge as a Fellow of Churchill College. She also teaches for the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, as part of a practice- based Ph.D. in Transdisciplinary Leadership and Creativity for Sustainability.

References

Incubation: a space for monsters by Bhanu Kapil

Humanimal: A Project for Future Children by Bhanu Kapil

entre-Ban by Bhanu Kapil

The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers by Bhanu Kapil

Schizophrene by Bhanu Kapil

Ban en Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil

How to Wash a Heart by Bhanu Kapil

Plot by Claudia Rankine

Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

As always, listen for a discount code for 10% discount on Bhanu Kapil's work at Storysmith.